Avira and secure.me Join Forces to Protect Personal Data and Privacy on Facebook

Focus of North American collaborative effort is to solidify social media security

Munich/San Francisco, 8th December 2011 – IT security experts Avira and the global service for online privacy and reputation protection secure.me are consolidating their partnership in a bid to improve online security and personal data and privacy protection for Facebook users. Avira and secure.me will offer customers in the US and Canada a bundled product package enabling better personal data and privacy control on Facebook. The product bundle will be available in 2012 and Avira will distribute the bundle in the US and Canada markets. Avira and secure.me have been working together for some time, focusing mainly on the European market.

“We share one vision with Avira: we believe that personal data and privacy protection is the essential next step in the evolution of IT security. Whereas, in the past, cyber crime mostly posed a risk to material values such as hardware, software, data and documents, it now affects people more directly – namely their privacy and their identity,” said Christian Sigl, founder of secure.me. “secure.me is the blueprint of your Internet life. It helps users own this blueprint and take control over their personal data and privacy. It also allows parents to protect their children on Facebook. By combining Avira’s high-quality IT security solutions with our privacy protection products for social media we can offer state-of-the-art security to all Internet users – you could call it IT Security 2.0.”

“Protection of personal data has always been Avira’s business, and as a result of our collaboration with secure.me, our customers can now also benefit from comprehensive protection in their use of the world’s largest online social network,” said Chris Weltzien, Managing Director of Avira. “One of the most important tasks for the IT security industry over the coming years will be to provide effective solutions for the protection of personal information. We are delighted that, together with secure.me, we are able to lead the market with a unique and as yet unrivalled solution.”

secure.me continually and reliably checks a user’s individual Facebook profile as well as their network of Facebook friends or that of their children. This way, secure.me enables complete control over critical content and all activities and status updates that appear in the user’s Facebook profile and that of their children and friends. The service includes biometric facial recognition software to keep a tab on any photos of the user appearing on the network. Furthermore, secure.me identifies sensitive personal information and offers tips for optimizing your privacy settings. The software also identifies unsafe links appearing within the controlled profile or friends’ network, that may contain viruses or other malware. secure.me is soon to become available for use with other social networking platforms.

Avira and secure.me will offer a joint product bundle. To learn more about the offering and to get notified about the availability, please visit the following website: www.avira.secure.me

About secure.me

secure.me is dedicated to a safe and carefree Internet experience. The online service protects personal data and the privacy of individuals and business owners and provides transparency regarding their reputation on the Internet. secure.me also empowers parents to keep their children safe on social networks such as Facebook. secure.me is available worldwide in ten different languages and at no cost.

secure.me is based on the proven monitoring and content-analysis technology of the German online reputation management pioneer myON-ID Media GmbH, founded in 2006 by Mario Grobholz and Christian Sigl. myON-ID Media is backed by several investors including T-Venture, the venture capital company of Deutsche Telekom (German Telekom). The company is headquartered in Munich and has an office in San Francisco, California.

Further information about secure.me is available at www.secure.me.

About Avira

Avira wants its customers to ‘live free’ from spyware, phishing, viruses and other internet-based threats.
The company was founded 25 years ago on Tjark Auerbach's promise to "make software that does good things for my friends and family." More than 100 million consumers and small businesses now depend upon Avira’s security expertise and award-winning antivirus software, making the company the number-two market share leader globally. Avira provides IT-security protection to computers, smartphones, servers and networks, delivered as both software and cloud-based services.

In addition to protecting the online world, Avira's CEO promotes well-being in the offline world through the Auerbach Foundation, which supports charitable and social projects. The philosophy of the foundation is to help people to help themselves.

For more information, please visit www.avira.com or join the community at www.facebook.com/avira.